


I've only felt religion (when I've laid with you)

by schmetterlinq



Category: Formula 1 RPF, Rush (2013)
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 14:45:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5338022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schmetterlinq/pseuds/schmetterlinq
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James finds Niki impossible to stay away from.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I've only felt religion (when I've laid with you)

**Author's Note:**

> This ship has taken over my life in the past few months. What's a girl to do? Write fic, obviously.
> 
> This is my very first fic about these two and indeed in this fandom (indeed in any sports fandom at all, my friends are baffled and my poor father who has struggled to relate to my other interests for years is delighted that we finally have something to talk about easily - if only he knew that at least half my emotional investment in all this is shipping - I'm sorry, dad). I'm still a newbie, so you must forgive me for any inaccuracies; I am still learning. 
> 
> This includes Niki's accident, not in detail of course but it is in here. 
> 
> Title from Halsey 'Colors'.

 

It wasn’t as though James had never fooled around with another man before — he had. Going to an all boys' school, you either accepted that it would be another boy that got you off or you didn't get off at all.

Of course, for the most part, as soon as they left school, all the old boys went right back to girls, and pretended that their dalliances with their school fellows behind the bike sheds or the science labs had never happened, but James hadn’t quite done that. He also wasn’t quite like the one or two boys who, even at school, had been obviously _like that_ , and in their adult lives would continue to seek out other men who were like that as well. He was somewhere in between the two.

He liked women – as many women as possible, ideally – but if he sometimes came across another man who wanted to pull him off or suck his cock, well, a hand was a hand and a mouth was a mouth. And, well, sometimes men were attractive. In a very different way to the way that women were attractive, but attractive none the less. James himself, for example, was extremely attractive: if he could somehow meet himself, he thought, he would very definitely have sex with himself.

Most men weren't as attractive as James, but some of them were worth more than a passing glance.

So when James immediately liked the look of Niki when they met, he wasn't particularly shocked or troubled by it. Niki certainly wasn't attractive – in fact he was really quite ugly – but he had soft curly hair, and piercing blue eyes that seemed to look straight through James. He would wrinkle up his face in an extremely silly and charming frown when he was concentrating on something, or when he was annoyed with James, or when he was trying to think of a word in English he'd forgotten. Even his overbite was rather adorable.

James certainly had no intention, at first, of pursuing the other man. He obviously had no shortage of women and some men throwing themselves at him, and he thought Niki would probably hit him if he ever made a pass, and that was okay.

*

It wasn't until they found themselves sharing a flat that he started to think about acting on his feelings. Niki was – delightful.

He was also an ass, and a bastard, and a recluse, and a total nightmare to live with because he was anal about everything from where James left his socks to exactly what brands of food they had to buy, but even so, he was delightful.

He was delightful in the mornings when his hair was soft and fluffy like a duckling’s feathers and he'd fumble around the kitchen sleepily, squinting at James over his yoghurt. He was delightful when they watched TV together and Niki would cackle loudly, freely, and suddenly imitate the characters so perfectly that James would find himself laughing at Niki harder than the actors.

He was even delightful when he was sulking, or worrying again about how to talk to his father about his racing ambitions – or maybe delightful was the wrong word, but he was _something_ , and James's heart would almost ache when he saw Niki curled up on the sofa in their living room, his small face heartbreakingly serious.

James had never really taken a fancy to someone like this before. He wasn't quite sure what to do about it.

In the end, it happened without him having to plan for it at all, as though it had always been meant to. They'd gone out and both come home with a girl, and next morning they were still dopey and tactile. James rested against Niki's side as they sat on the sofa together, both in their dressing gowns, and Niki didn't protest or push him away.

“Good night?” James asked, after they'd watched the BBC midday news in silence for a while.

“Mmm.” Niki made a sound halfway between a chuckle and a purr, and it was quite maddeningly sexy, to be honest. “You?”

“Oh yes, nice enough. She was a bit … dull though, ready to drop off after only two rounds, could you believe?”

Niki laughed. “It's not like the poor girl ever had a chance of satisfying your immense sexual appetite though, is it, James?”

“I suppose not,” James said. “I suppose I'll have to find more company for tonight.” In his head, he was already going the current list of girls who he could call when he wanted a shag.

Niki was laughing at him again – “Yes, I suppose you shall have to” – and then, completely unexpectedly, he was half in James's lap and James's hands were inside Niki's underwear and gripping his cock, and Niki was grinding himself against James and his fingernails were scrabbling at James's back.

It was all so sudden that James wasn't even really sure how it had happened in the first place, but why question a good thing? He pulled Niki to his feet and took him to the single bedroom at the back of the flat.

They fucked all day. It wasn't proper fucking at first, just pulling each other off and then curling round each other like cats on the bed so they could both suck each other at the same time. James could feel all the noises Niki made around his cock, groans and hums and his rather muffled gasp of, “James!” when James let his fingers stray down to tease the sensitive skin just behind his balls.

They lay beside each other for a while after that, sharing a couple of cigarettes, and James thought he should probably be put off by the smell of sweat and spunk in the room, but it was strangely intoxicating. Then they fucked for real – James let Niki go on top first in case suggesting otherwise scared him away, but afterwards Niki seemed quite keen to do it the other way round too.

James was more than happy to oblige: he couldn’t keep his hands off Niki, and the feeling seemed to be mutual. Even by the evening, when James was on the phone attempting to order in food because there was nothing in the fridge, Niki was pressing himself against James's side and even grabbing at his cock while James was speaking to the nice old lady who worked in the Chinese down the road. When James hung up he called Niki a tart, and Niki said he was one to talk, and then he said, “I suppose you won't have to call any of your girl friends after all,” and James said, “No, I suppose I shan’t” and then he sucked Niki off and Niki sucked him, and the food got delivered during all this and sat outside for nearly an hour, so they had to eat it cold.

After that, they were still friends, and they still hated each other half the time, and they still saw girls and fucked girls, but they fucked each other too, and it was always good. James was happy – he thought this was enough.

*

“You know, it’s really a shame Niki’s not a girl,” said Hesketh, “Then you could just marry him.”

James choked on his wine and said, “What?”

They were at some party with various people from other teams and the sponsors and the press – James wasn't quite sure what the purpose was exactly, but Hesketh had said it was very important to attend, and it seemed like other people felt the same because everyone was here.

“Niki,” Hesketh was saying. They’d been talking, not seriously, about how James ought to find himself a wife, and now suddenly the subject had changed to Niki. But Hesketh went on: “You like him so much, I suppose you would marry him, if he was a girl.”

“What exactly are you basing this theory on?” James asked. They had joked about his odd friendship with Niki before, but now he felt strangely defensive and he wasn't quite sure why.

“Well, you spend so much time with him. When he's around, you two just tuck yourselves away in a corner and get all cosy together for hours. Even when you argue and you say you hate him, he's really the person you like to be around most, isn't he?”

“We're friends,” James said, more angrily than he meant to.

Hesketh looked surprised. “Calm down – I'm only – only kidding. You two are just – you two are rather sweet.”

Hesketh was red in the face, and it was entirely possible he’d had more to drink than he was letting on, but that didn't really make James feel any better. _In vino veritas_ , after all, as the saying went. Suddenly, the thought that he and Niki were close enough for Hesketh to comment like this made him feel decidedly uncomfortable, as though Hesketh had stripped him down in the middle of the party and was studying him naked.

He went to get another drink, and met Bubbles by the bar.

“Hesketh just said that if Niki was a girl I'd want to marry him,” he said, hoping for some support, but Bubbles just laughed.

“I can see why. Whenever Niki makes one of his stupid jokes, nobody else even pretends to laugh but you do, and you look at him all soppy like you think he's the best person in the world.”

“No I don't!” James snapped, and then, “Do I?”

Bubbles laughed again. “Yeah, mate, you do. You should see yourself.”

*

After that, James worried whether he should put some distance between himself and Niki. The problem was that Niki was impossible to stay away from. It was as though the little rat came with a magnet specifically designed to attract one James Hunt.

Less than a day after those quite humiliating conversations at the party with Hesketh and Bubbles, Niki was back in James’s bed. James didn’t intend for it to happen; in fact, he was thinking quite seriously that he should probably never sleep with Niki again. But then Niki returned home, his thin face flushed from the cold outside and his hair especially fluffy when he pulled off his hat, and he was irresistible.

It wasn’t as though James had ever been that good at exercising self restraint, anyway.

Even after Niki moved out of their shared flat (which wasn’t their flat at all, it was James’s flat where Niki had slept on the sofa for a while, but James had very quickly started thinking of it as ‘theirs’) James still felt as though he was joined to Niki at the hip.

He would go to a race with no intention of spending any time with Niki, and less than half an hour later find they were perched together on one of their cars or huddled in a private corner. They’d inevitably find themselves in the same bars, the same parties, and every time, in spite of being surrounded by people who on the face of it were far more agreeable company, James would gravitate towards Niki.

Sometimes these meetings ended in sex; sometimes they’d go their separate ways with just handshakes and back slaps like any other friends. But no matter where James was, it seemed that Niki was always there too, and when Niki was around, James was powerless to stay away.

James moved up to F1, and of course at around the same time so did Niki. James decided he must be doomed to spend the rest of his life with the other man. Perhaps he should just be happy about it, he thought, and hang everyone else and what they thought. After all, it wasn’t as though James had ever before lived his life based on what other people thought he should do — if he had done, he’d be a doctor in some musty hospital, forcing pills down the throats of dying people.

And it wasn’t, he thought defiantly, as though he and Niki were doing anything wrong. He said as much to Niki himself one afternoon in Italy, looking up from the book he was reading to share his thoughts. “Oscar Wilde was like this, of course. Bill Shakespeare, the greatest poet of the English language, and he got up to it. The Greeks and the Romans, they were all at it all the time.”

“What are you going on about?” asked Niki, who was going over notes from his practise sessions.

James should have known better than to try to talk to Niki about anything when he was thinking about his car. “Romans, Ratty,” he explained.

“The Romans aren’t going to help you beat me this weekend, my dear,” said Niki, and James threw his book at him.

*

When Niki won his first world championship, he was unbearable about it, an unbearably arrogant prick, and James hated it. But he still found himself in Niki’s hotel room at four in the morning after the celebrations, drinking their way through yet another bottle of champagne. Niki was extremely drunk, his small face flushed and his eyes out of focus. James took a mouthful of the champagne and got down on his knees, unzipped Niki’s jeans and sucked his cock. Niki tugged on his hair the whole time, his smile triumphant but his eyes fond.

*

James was happy. He had the best job in the world — getting paid to circle the globe and drive cars really fast, what could be better than that really? — almost — almost — more women than even he knew what to do with, and he had Niki.

Niki, who would show up at the McLaren garage out of the blue, doing uncannily brilliant impressions of characters from TV shows (“Basil! Don’t mention the war!”) and hurry off laughing whenever James was distracted from whatever his mechanics were trying to tell him. Niki, who would nearly drive him off the track but shake his hand on the podium afterwards and touch his arm or his back almost tenderly in congratulations. Niki, who would badmouth him to the press but be the last one up drinking with James after a race, letting James lean against his side when he was sleepy from all the alcohol.

They didn’t fuck as often any more. There were always so many people around, the whole F1 circus, and as much as James was now firmly committed to the belief that there was nothing wrong with what they had done together, he still didn’t fancy ending up in the papers for being caught in bed with his most famous rival.

Besides, he was so busy with so many girls.

Niki himself got a fair amount of female attention — not anything like as much as James, of course, but then nobody else got that. Even so, the thrill of sleeping with an F1 driver, an F1 champion no less — the thrill of the lifestyle, the fame, the money — seemed to more than make up for Niki’s ugliness and abrasive personality, and he certainly wasn’t lonely without James to warm his bed.

They still stumbled drunkenly into each other’s hotel rooms sometimes, but perhaps, James thought, they were finally on their way to being normal friends, not almost man and wife as Hesketh and Bubbles had once suggested.

That idea made James rather wistful if he thought about it — but then James thought about almost nothing in those days, except driving and mind-altering substances and sex. So if it ever occurred to him to miss how he and Niki used to be, he put it out of his mind.

*

Germany was the worst thing that had ever happened. It was a nightmare come true — worse than a nightmare, because even James’s worst nightmares hadn't been as bad as this.

_Niki._

They all knew that people were seriously injured, even killed, in this sport. They saw it happen. But everyone still thought their own life was charmed, and James had extended that belief to Niki too: he had always just known they would both be okay. They had to be, because this was Niki, and he wasn’t – he didn’t – he couldn’t –

James knew there’d been a crash, but the remains of the car were so burned out that it was impossible even to see which team it belonged to.

When he got back to the garage and the team told him it was Niki, he didn't believe it. Niki was the most precise driver James knew, and he of everyone had been thinking about the dangerous conditions that day; it was impossible for him to have crashed.

James took off out of the garage to find someone who knew what they were talking about. The rain was still falling, hard enough to sting when it hit his face.

It wasn’t Niki. It couldn’t be Niki.

He found a marshal and grabbed the man's arm. “Who – the accident – who –?”

The marshal blinked at him, not understanding, and James forced himself to form all the words: “Who was it? In the accident?”

“Lauda,” said the marshal. “He’s alive but he’s in a bad way, he was stuck in that car for over a minute. They’re airlifting him to hospital.”

James threw up almost immediately, all over the marshal’s trousers and shoes. James’s mechanics caught up with him then, calmed down the angry marshal and helped James away.

*

Niki was alive. James tried to cling onto that.

He didn’t go and visit Niki in hospital. He was a coward, and he was too ashamed. He was sure the accident was his fault.

He spent most of his days locked away in whatever hotel room he was staying in, drinking and smoking dope. When his mind was sufficiently addled, he could almost believe that Niki was with him. He imagined they were lying side by side, so close that Niki’s face blurred and all James could see clearly were his piercing blue eyes. He thought he could feel Niki’s hair under his fingers, startling every time with its softness; thought he could taste Niki’s mouth against his, the sweat on Niki’s skin; thought he could feel the weight of Niki’s body in his arms.

“I love you,” James whispered, realising he’d never meant anything more in his whole life. “I love you, I love you...” But every time he opened his eyes, of course, Niki was never there.

*

Then all of a sudden, Niki _was_ there – not in James’s hotel room, but back, a real living presence at the race track. It was unbelievable, and it was also so incredibly _Niki_ that James didn’t doubt it for a moment when he heard.

He went straight to the Ferrari garage, and spotted Niki there immediately, crouching down and fussing over his car as though he’d never been away. For a second, a weight lifted from James’s shoulders – but when he said the other man’s name and Niki got to his feet and turned round, the whole upper half of his lovely face was raw and red and horrifying.

James froze, just for a second: he couldn’t help it. Niki went on smiling, but his eyes looked as though James had hit him, and James wanted to fall to his knees and howl.

*

He went to Niki’s hotel room after the race. He’d expected Niki to go straight back to the hospital, but when he was told that the other man would be travelling there the next day, the temptation to see him was too strong.

Part of James felt that he shouldn’t, that he should leave Niki alone, that he’d done more than enough damage already – but he felt like he’d only just been holding himself together all day, and it seemed as though Niki was as magnetic as ever, pulling James into him.

He knocked on Niki’s door without the slightest idea of what he was going to do, telling himself he’d just apologise, wish Niki a speedy recovery and ask if there was anything he could do to help. But when Niki answered the door – looking quizzical, although he must have guessed who it would be – James was instantly helpless.

He was kissing Niki before he’d even realised he was going to, clutching at the other man’s waist – not his face; careful of his face – and they were stumbling back into the room.

Niki just gasped, and he didn't kiss back, but he didn’t push James away either. He kicked the door closed behind them and let James cling to him.

James pulled away, and went to rest his forehead against Niki’s, realised he couldn't and backed off. He kept his hands at Niki’s hips, trying to ground himself, to convince himself the other man was really alive and really here.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry –”

Up close, the scars on Niki's face looked even worse, twisted and terrible, as violent as the crash that had caused them. But it didn’t matter; it was still Niki. He could have been a severed head on a stick and James wouldn’t have cared, he just wanted his Niki.

Niki finally spoke – in his sweet low voice, the voice James had been dreaming of hearing again for weeks. “It’s not your fault.”

James swallowed a sob. They were silent for a few moments, the only sound James’s ragged breathing.

Niki’s piercing blue eyes, the eyes that had seen right through James from the very moment they met, were darting back and forth, looking anywhere but at James’s face, and James realised that Niki must be thinking about how much he had changed, how he now looked.

He kissed Niki to stop him thinking, and then they were tumbling back onto the bed, James kissing Niki’s mouth, his jaw, his neck.

When he started unbuttoning Niki’s shirt, revealing even more burns, James nearly choked. “God, Niki, it must – it must be hell.”

Niki tried a smile. “This is not so bad. You did not see the worst of it, when I was first in hospital.”

James pressed his face to Niki's stomach. He kissed the soft skin there, breathed in Niki’s scent.

“Changing the bandages. They had to change the bandages every day, and every day when they did they’d rip off all the skin too. They had to vacuum my lungs.” Niki was patting James's head as though James was a dog. “That was hell. They put a pipe down my throat and vacuumed all the shit out of my lungs.”

“Christ, Niki.”

“Do you know how I got through it? By watching you on the TV, winning all those races. I just thought about how I had to get back so I could beat you again.”

James started to cry. He gripped one of Niki’s hands, pressed his face against it and sobbed. He kissed Niki’s fingertips, his fingers, his knuckles.

“I need you,” he whispered eventually. “Niki – I might die if I don’t have you —”

They stripped each other off and made love frantically, like teenagers. James panicked again for a moment when they were both naked and he saw Niki’s bruised, scarred body and how he’d become even skinnier in the hospital, but Niki insisted that if James was careful, if he let Niki control the pace and where they touched, that everything would be fine. He straddled James and prepped himself, sank down on James’s cock as though he was meant to be there. James clung to Niki’s hips; kissed every piece of undamaged skin he could find.

The next day, Niki set off back to the hospital. James kissed his mouth and both his hands, and promised to visit. “I love you,” he sighed into Niki’s hair, so softly he thought Niki probably didn’t hear, but James needed to say it anyway.

*

Niki was different, after his accident, but he was also just the same. They were different, though. Heading to Niki’s room after a race was normal now.

James learned the shape of the scars on Niki’s face, the way they felt under his fingers and his lips. He learned the new shape of Niki's hairline, the feel of his chest where he'd been burnt.

They never addressed the “I love you”, never even discussed if Niki knew it had been said, but James didn’t care. He had his Niki back, and that was more than enough.

James wasn’t a religious man, but touching Niki now, even just sitting by his side, felt like a miracle.

*

After the race in Monaco a few years later, after announcing he was retiring, James went to Niki’s room, the same as he always did now.

He didn't even fully admit to himself how afraid he was that this would be the last time they were together. James was sure he’d made the right decision to walk away from all this: he’d had all he could take; he’d achieved everything he’d wanted to achieve. The only thing keeping him here now was Niki.

A few years ago, after Niki’s accident, that would have been enough, but now it wasn’t, not in the face of everything else. And it wasn’t fair to the other man, who had never really given James any reason to believe that he needed James the way James needed him.

So James was prepared to walk away from whatever was between him and Niki, too. But now – even if it was for the last time – he’d pretend everything was okay, and he’d go to Niki’s room.

As soon as Niki answered the door, however, James knew that there was no way they could pretend.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Niki said, before he’d even let James inside.

James sat meekly on the bed, like a schoolboy being scolded. Niki was pacing up and down the room. He ranted about how James was an idiot, too proud to wait while the car improved; too arrogant to accept that he might not win a championship again for a few years, if ever.

Eventually Niki paused, and James managed to say, “I can’t do this any more, Niki.”

Niki stared at him, eyes blazing, and James said, “It’s just not the same any more – the car's shit, and it’s – I’m done. I want out.”

Niki seemed speechless for a few moments. Then he started pacing again, swearing in both English and German. He seemed to be almost starting to say something several times, but each time he broke off.

“Niki,” James said eventually. “I –”

“I need you,” Niki blurted. “You can't. I need you.”

They stared at each other. Niki was panting like he’d just run a marathon.

James made him say it again, and Niki said, “Fuck you,” but then he did: “I need you. I need you, James.”

James swallowed a sob, and held out his hand. Niki came easily, meekly, sliding onto the bed beside him. He cradled James’s face between his hands, in a way James had never been touched before – as though he was something precious, something pure.

“You can’t,” Niki said against James’s chest. “You can’t.”

“We can still –” James started to say, and Niki kissed him like James was his only source of oxygen. His hand fumbled at James’s jeans, and James felt like he might pass out. _I love you_ , his brain said, as his fingers slid into Niki’s adorable curly hair; _I love you, I love you_ – but he was too overcome to even think about saying it out loud.

*

Niki came to London the day after his next race.

It had been strange, not to set off for that weekend, knowing everybody else was going. James didn’t watch the race on television. He smoked some weed and drank himself to sleep. But he got out of bed and showered and dressed on the following Monday, because Niki had said he’d come.

James was in the middle of feeding his budgies when Niki arrived. Niki laughed when he saw three of them perched on James’s hand, and stretched out one finger to stroke the friendliest one. James’s heart warmed at the thought that Niki knew him and his birds well enough to remember which of his budgies enjoyed being petted.

They made love and fell asleep in each other’s arms. When they woke up the next morning, Niki had wrapped himself into a cocoon in the all the bedclothes, leaving James exposed.

James kicked him out of bed for that.

“It is not the same without you,” Niki said, over breakfast.

“Why, because you got used to getting your dick sucked after every race and now you can’t find anyone else willing to do it?” James asked, and Niki flipped him off.

“It’s not the same without you,” he said again, later, when they were lying in bed together again, James holding Niki against his chest, his lips pressed to the rough, bumpy skin of Niki’s forehead.

“I love you,” James said. He realised he'd never said it this loudly, this openly, and that was a surprise, because in some ways he felt like he’d been telling Niki he loved him for years.

Niki reached across and took his hand. He didn’t speak, but he gripped James’s fingers so hard that his nails left little half-moon indents in James's skin.

James nosed his face into Niki’s hair, and closed his eyes.

 

 

Fin


End file.
